2nd Hard Drive V.S. New System

Hi. I have Win98 on my system but, given the posts I have read on ET, think it would be prudent to trade with Windows 2000.

Instead of buying a new system, couldn't I install a second hard drive loaded with Win2000 and my trading software, choose it at boot-up, and use it for trading?

If so, what are the pros and cons of doing this? Would speed or performance suffer? (This would be for intraday trading, possibly scalping e-minis, no overnights. I have a DSL connection, lots of RAM, etc. already.)

If you wish to keep your win98 while still having win2000 simply set it up to dual boot.
Make sure you have a hard drive with major space as win2000 is about a gig installed + win98 about 200MB + space for all your other programs etc.
Fdisk your blank hard drive creating 2 partitions to make 2 drive letters making sure the primary partition is big to accomodate win2000.
Install win98 first BUT during install when it asks you where to install it (default is c:\windows) CHANGE it to D:\windows

After win98 is installed install windows 2000. During this process it will ask you if you want to keep your previous O/S, obviously tell it YES. Install your win2000 on drive C (Which is your primary partition).

After its done (about a frigin year after you begin) it will display a bootmenu which you can choose windows or windows 2000.

The reason you put these on 2 different partitions is win2000 will install the programfiles folder on its primary partition without asking you otherwise. If windows98 is also on C drive 2000 will overwrite the default programs. One example of a problem created by this will be IExplorer will have an incorrect version and won't run on Win98 anymore.

These nasties are avoided by doing the split partition install as I described.
If you don't know what Fdisk is do yourself a favor and seek out a local PC shop to do this for you. If you have critical data on your hard drive THIS WILL WIPE IT ALL OUT so back it all up or simply put in a new bigger hard drive to do this.

I'll be online Sunday afternoon. Email me if you have questions.

I owned a PC shop for 5 years in case you wonder if I'm capable of this advice.

I cannot comment on your ET software as I have no knowledge of it specifically.
Far as dual boot goes vs. performance of the PC itself, it will not make any difference. Win2000 does require a lot of ram and CPU speed to run fast however. I'll assume you checked out the requirements for win2000 b4 posting.

Thanks for your comments, but why deal with the hassle of dual-booting with one hard drive partioned when a second hard drive is so cheap nowadays? I worry about losing data, etc., in the partition process or reformating and would really prefer to just have a 2nd hard drive with Win2000.

Is this possible?

Nitro:

PII - 400, 256 RAM, one monitor, DSL. Is PII insufficient for trading? I've read posts saying it is and most important thing is RAM and broadband connection.....

Thanks for your comments, but why deal with the hassle of dual-booting with one hard drive partioned when a second hard drive is so cheap nowadays? I worry about losing data, etc., in the partition process or reformating and would really prefer to just have a 2nd hard drive with Win2000.

Is this possible?

Nitro:

PII - 400, 256 RAM, one monitor, DSL. Is PII insufficient for trading? I've read posts saying it is and most important thing is RAM and broadband connection.....

More...

Hapa,

IMHO, you are correct in the second drive vs dual boot. There are even devices that will allow you to choose wich disk to boot from.

As far as your computer goes, it is OK to make the generalization that you made (that RAM and connection are most important) but obviously it depends on what you are doing.

I had a dual P450 with 650MB of RAM. Because of the way that I gather information, and because my software is boneheaded, this didn't even come close to cutting it. Today, I have a 1.7Ghz Xeon (dual capable) machine with 1GB of Rambus RAM (ECC RAM, which is slower than non-parity, but no stray particle beams from outer space flipping a bit on me. Also, I should have gotten the 1.8, they have a 512K cache instead of a 256K - big difference for almost the same price)

Computers are so inexpensive today, I try not to let that be my deciding factor. I try to stay away from the latest and get one or two generations behind the state of the art, which is where the sweet spot between price/performance falls for me.

I always have my computer set up with two hard drives both running Windows XP. I find Windows XP to be a lot more reliable that Windows 98 or Windows Millenium. Windows 2000 is pretty reliable too but there are some programs and such that won't run on it since it is already an older program.

Right now I only have one computer so I like to have a second hard drive ready to run in case I have any problems running the main hard drive. It's a lot cheaper to have a second hard drive than it is to have a second computer for backup. I've had it happen twice my main hard drive has died. I also like to use the second hard drive to test out new programs in case I'm worried about messing up my main hard drive.

Email me if you need any help finding an inexpensive source for Windows 2000 or XP.